Local Option

STRONGLY SUPPORT
S. 1776/Golden
S. 2009/Volker
A. 2808/Colton

Update 4/20/07: Senator Golden, Chair of the Senate Aging Committee, has put his bill S1776 on agenda for the Aging Committee meeting Monday, April 23 at noon. Click here for the support memo with two studies. Winkelman and the Garis study published January, 2007 in Drug Benefit Trends. Members of the Senate Aging Committee are as follows:

Senator Golden, Chair, Brooklyn 518-455-2730; 718-238-6044
Senator Maziarz, Niagara 518-455-2024; 585-637-5800
Senator Farley, Schenectady 518-455-2181; 518-762-3733
Senator Leibell, Westchester 518-455-3111; 914-245-6230
Senator Flanagan, Suffolk 518-455-2071; 631-361-2154
Senator Griffo, Utica 518-455-3334; 315-793-9072

Minority members
Senator Ruben Diaz, Sr., Bronx 518-455-2511; 718-991-3161
Senator Carl Kruger, Brooklyn 518-455-2460; 718-743-8610
Senator Toby Stavisky, Queens 518-455-3461; 718-445-0004
Senator Jose Serrano, Bronx 518-455-2795; 212-828-5829
Senator Eric Adams, Brooklyn 518-455-2431; 718-284-4700

The Senate legislation would prohibit health insurers who provide a prescription drug benefit from "mandating" insured's receive their prescriptions via mail-order. The Assembly legislation further adds that insurers are prohibited from imposing unfair co-payments on consumers who prefer to use their community-based pharmacy.

Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) aggressively move their clients into mail-order pharmacy services by either "prohibiting" consumers from getting their prescriptions filled at their community pharmacy or by imposing economic disincentives that steer consumers to their subsidiary mail order pharmacy operations. These self-serving business practices have led to several well-documented court cases charging PBMs with fleecing their clients by inflating the prices and hiding the rebate revenues.

New York State loses hundreds of millions of dollars each year as tax payer supported prescription drug plans "mandate" mail-order prescription drug services, while tax paying, job creating community pharmacies are not allowed to compete. PBMs simply write the local pharmacy out of their plans, shift volume to themselves and continue to call this "cost-containment."

New York's consumers are the big losers here as study after study has demonstrated that face-to-face consultations between consumers and their pharmacist save health care dollars by reducing other health care costs and enhancing a patient's quality of life.